Wonders of Sergoit Hills

An overview of three accounts of return visits published in Habari, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: "'n Droom of werklikheid" by Ria McCulloch (Habari 1992), "Kenia dagboek" by Ds Piet Grobler (Habari 1992), and an account of a family visit to Eldoret, Turbo and Patatadraai in December 2002 (Habari 2003). The first two are in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. From the 1990s onward, settler families began to come back to see the farms, churches and graves they had left around independence. Their accounts in Habari are bittersweet, and they also record what had become of the old places, often in the hands of Kenyan churches, schools and families. Ria McCulloch, 1992 Ria McCulloch, daughter of Wolfie Wolmarans, the principal of the Broederstroom school, came home "on the last stretch" through Timboroa and Ainabkoi, where the little station still looked as it had. At the old Van Rensburg house t...

An overview of "Herinneringe aan Kenia" (Memories of Kenya) by S.C. Labuschagne, published in Habari 1992, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. S.C. Labuschagne, by then 86 years old, wrote after reading familiar names in Habari: Frank Arnoldi, Sonny Cloete and his sister Bonnie, Piet and Poppie Jordaan, Bokkie von Maltitz and "Miss Keese". She wanted to know who was still alive. Her short memoir tells of a family that lived for a while right under Sergoit Kop. The journey, 1917 In 1917 her father, Wessel Pienaar, left South Africa for British East Africa with her mother and their six children, on a doctor's advice that a different climate might help her mother, who was often ill. At Mombasa her father had to pay such a large deposit that money was very short. From Londiani the only transport to Eldoret was by ox wagon. Theirs had no proper tent, only la...

An overview of "Herinneringe van Edward Steyn soos vertel aan sy seun Danie" (Memories of Edward Steyn as told to his son Danie), published in Habari 2003, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Edward Steyn was the father of Danie Steyn, one of the main contributors to Habari. Late in life he told his son about his first years on the Plateau in the 1920s: threshing, road making, building the Plateau hall and farming at Sirikwa. Arrival He came to Kenya by boat from Beira with Oom Kosie, and found Nig Bappie and Jan Murphy already there. On the boat he met Percy van der Westhuizen and an old man named Hendrik Kok. From Mombasa they took the train together. Murphy and Bappie got off at Nairobi, Edward and Kosie rode on to Plateau station, and the Koks went on to Eldoret. By then the railway ran almost to Uganda and the Turbo line reached Bungoma in Kitosh, but the branch...

An overview of "Goeie ou dae" (Good old days) by Jurgens Joubert, published in Habari 1998, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Jurgens Joubert grew up near Kitale, went to school in Eldoret and spent much of his working life as a Kenya Police officer on the Plateau, at Eldoret, Soy and Turbo. His short memoir mixes church weekends, schoolday names and the lighter side of police work. To communion by ox wagon Several times a year the family drove from Kitale to Eldoret by ox wagon for communion at the Vergenoeg church, usually leaving on a Wednesday and doing the last stretch on Saturday morning. On one trip they slept under the wagon at Hoey's Bridge, where he mistook a dishcloth flapping on a thorn tree for a ghost. With them were Loet von Maltitz and his wife Sofie, his mother's sister. At the church an old man went round greeting everyone, and Jurgens hea...

An overview of "My skooldae" (My school days) and related memories published in Habari 1986, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The writer, a grandson of Sannie van Vuuren of Patatadraai, is not named in the scanned pages. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. These short pieces come from a boy who grew up at Patatadraai, north of Eldoret on the Sergoit side, in the 1920s. They include one of the clearest explanations of where the name Patatadraai came from. How Patatadraai got its name The writer's grandmother, Tant Sannie van Vuuren, came to Kenya with the Van Rensburg trek in 1908 and brought a few small sweet potatoes with her. She planted them and they grew, the first sweet potatoes in the area, and many neighbours asked her for runners. Oom Frans van Deventer then named his grandfather's farm "Patatadraai". Some of the sweet potatoes, the writer says, grew so big that a baboon co...

An overview of "Skooldae op Broederstroom" (School days at Broederstroom) by Hermanus Steyn, published in Habari 1986, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Broederstroom, between Sergoit and Plateau, was the heart of the Afrikaans settlement on the Uasin Gishu, and its school educated generations of settler children. Hermanus Steyn, who also wrote the tribute to Thysie Davies, remembers his years there. The church school The school began as a small church school, probably of the Dutch Reformed Church, since most of the teachers were members. Ds M.P. Loubser sometimes came to help, riding his horse Kolbooi. When Hermanus started, the school had two classrooms, a hostel, a house nearby fitted out as boys' bedrooms, and a two roomed building called Bethel, perhaps first meant for a minister, where an unmarried headmaster lived. Married headmasters and their wives ran...

An overview of a set of memories by Sonnie Cloete published in Habari 1984, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. In Habari 1984 Sonnie Cloete of Concordia wrote a long, cheerful piece about the characters of the old Plateau and the Vergenoeg congregation. It is a collection of anecdotes rather than a history, and some of them are clearly told for a laugh, but it also records place names and people that appear nowhere else. The naming party Sonnie gives his own version of the day Sixty Four was named. Eldoret stood on Farm No. 64, about 64 miles from Londiani, the nearest station. A stream called the Eldora flowed into the Sosiani. The governor, he says, called the Uasin Gishu "the Eldorado of the North", and since the Nandi and Elgeyo liked names ending in "et", proposed Eldoret. After the meeting nearly the whole community went to Eddy's Bar, then sat d...

An overview of "Eldoret Sports Club", a history of Eldoret rugby compiled from information given by C.F. Schermbrucker and "Stompie" Jones, published in English in Habari 2000, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text. Eldoret has produced great athletes in our own time. This short history from Habari 2000 tells of an earlier sporting story, the rugby club of "64", which for a time was among the strongest in East Africa. The early days Rugby was already being played on the Plateau before C.F. Schermbrucker arrived in Eldoret in 1926. The club's first president was Tommy O'Shea. Turbo then ran its own side, and Eldoret often struggled to raise fifteen players. Soon after 1928 Turbo's players joined Eldoret, and from then on "64" came into its own. Schermbrucker remembered how he played his first game. He was on a farm when an old box body Rover drove up and Fre...

An overview of "Die goue jare van die firma Hughes Ltd" (The golden years of Hughes Ltd), by Koos Engelbrecht of Soy, published in Habari 1998, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Hughes Ltd was the Ford dealer that, in the writer's words, slowly made "the blue might of Ford" take over the Uasin Gishu. Koos Engelbrecht, son of Faantjie and Gertie Engelbrecht of Mimosa Farm at Soy, worked there from the end of 1954 and was still in the motor trade 42 years later. In South Africa, he says, people still call him "Koos Hughes". Recruited from school The firm had branches in Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret and Kitale, led by J.J. Hughes and his wife Dorothy, who was also a member of the Legislative Council, with their son Peter, a well known rally driver, and their daughter Zelda. In December 1954, at the end of his last term at the Prince of Wales School...

An overview of "Victor Germishuis skryf" (Victor Germishuis writes), published in Habari 1997, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Victor Germishuis grew up at Burnt Forest (Verbrandebos) and in Eldoret between the two world wars. His memoir is full of names of neighbours, teachers and workmates, and gives a clear picture of farm schools, communion weekends and young people's lives on the Plateau in the 1930s. From Londiani to Burnt Forest His parents came from Barkly East in South Africa in 1912, sailing from Durban with relatives who settled around Nakuru and the Kinangop. His father served in the Belfield Scouts in the First World War, then bought two wagons and oxen and carted goods from Londiani to Eldoret, since there was no railway yet between Nakuru and Eldoret. Victor remembers place names on the old road: Arnoldi's Bridge, Erasmus Bridge, the Draaib...

An overview of a letter from Nicholas Yego Maina to Dan Steyn, published in Habari 2021, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text. Most of what Habari publishes was written by the settler families themselves. In 2021 the newsletter printed something different: a letter from a Kenyan farmer in the Burnt Forest (Verbrandebos) area, who had found the old issues of Habari online and wrote to Dan Steyn with his questions. Who farmed here before? Nicholas Yego Maina explained that his interest in the colonial history of Kenya began when he took over the running of part of his family's farms. Several of those farms had belonged to British settlers, and at least one had been owned by a company with an Afrikaner partner. His father had bought farms from settler owners, and the home farm had once been part of a larger estate. The note before the letter adds that he knew the family who now owned the old Steyn farm and ...

An overview of two pages in Habari 1987, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: a hand drawn map of the farms around Sergoit and Patatadraai, and the 1920 programme of the Vergenoeg youth society. Both are in Afrikaans and Dutch. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a copy. Two small pages in Habari 1987 bring the Sergoit settler community of a hundred years ago into focus: one shows where the families lived, and the other shows what they did together on their evenings out. The map: "Ja, onthou ek Patatadraai waar ek groot geword het" The map is a sketch by a former resident, with the note "Yes, I remember Patatadraai where I grew up". It shows the farms between Sergoit and Eldoret, with Sergoit Kop, the Sergoit sawmill and the road to Kitale. The farms are marked by the family names of the time, among them J.M. Davies near Sergoit Kop, Albert Steyn, Piet Jordaan, J.N. Mouton, Van Ryneveld, Gert van Rensburg, Gert and Hans Roets, Cornelius ...

An overview of a set of stories by Sonnie Cloete published in Habari 1988, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Sonnie Cloete of Concordia, near Sergoit, was one of the great storytellers of the Plateau. The archive already carries some of his tales. In Habari 1988 he sent in another collection, signed simply "Sonnie", with a promise that he would stop writing after the year 2000 because by then his true stories would run out and he would have to start lying. The Rooi Hel He retells a transport rider's story, told in the voice of a driver called Koos, of taking a heavy Merryweather wagon with eighteen oxen on the road to Londiani and reaching the "Rooi Hel" (Red Hell), a stretch of deep red mud where wagons stood stuck all around, with men shouting and swearing. Everyone told him the oxen would drown. He stood on the front of the wagon, spoke to his oxen...

An overview of three items in Habari, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: a letter from the Rev Colin Garvie (Habari 1991), a note in Habari 1994, and "Donald Sutherland Garvie: Adventurer and Kenya Pioneer" by Colin G. Garvie (Habari 1995). This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text. Before the big Afrikaner treks of 1908, a small group of Boer settlers was already living on the edge of the Uasin Gishu, in Nandi country. Their story was pieced together by the Rev Colin Garvie, who was researching his family and asked Habari readers for help. The Garvie brothers Five Garvie brothers came to Kenya between 1905 and 1912. Donald Sutherland Garvie, born in Edinburgh on 3 June 1873, had been a trader, hunter and explorer in Central Africa, and was at the Relief of Kimberley in the Anglo Boer War. He then married a young Boer woman, Nellie (Cornelia) Steyn, whom Habari describes as related to President Steyn of the Orange Free State. In 1902 the...

An overview of "The Uasin Gishu: An Economic Survey by the Land Ranger (1911)", part of an article by A.U. Tannahill in the East African Review of October 1932, reprinted in Habari 1990 and again in Habari 2002, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text. In 1911 a government Land Ranger toured the farms of the Uasin Gishu Plateau and wrote a report for his superiors. It is one of the earliest official snapshots of the settlement, written just as Farm 64 was becoming Eldoret, and Sergoit appears in it again and again. Stores and post offices There were four stores on the Plateau: the Sergoit Store, run by A.C. Hoey close to Lake Sergoit; Kemp's store on Farm 64; Haji Nur Mahomed's store on the Sergoit to Londiani road, sixteen miles south of Sergoit; and Esmail Bhanjee's store at the boma on Farm 84. Almost everything could be bought at them, and the Sergoit Store was also an agent for farm i...

An overview of "The History of Sixty Four", published in English in Habari 1984, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The writer is not named. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text. The archive already carries several accounts of how Farm 64 got the name Eldoret. This piece from Habari 1984 adds detail on the years just before and after, from the first post office to the first bank, and it places Sergoit at the centre of the early Plateau. A town that began as a post office The writer says Eldoret is probably unique among the big East African towns in having begun as a post office. By 1910 the farms surveyed in 1909 by the Royal Engineers were filling up with British ex-officers and successive Afrikaner treks. Settlers complained that the district was being ignored, and in May 1910 a Farmers' Association was formed at a meeting at Sergoit. That year the Postmaster General, J. Gosling, toured the Plateau, and post offices were opene...

An overview of two memoirs in Habari, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: "Ons onthou Henza" by Ds Piet Grobler (Habari 1983) and "Mev Bets Grobler skryf oor haar en Ds Piet se lewe in Kenia, 1961 tot 1963" by Bets Grobler (Habari 2021). Both are in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Piet and Bets Grobler came to the Vergenoeg parsonage in Eldoret as a newly married couple in the last two years before independence. Their two accounts, written nearly forty years apart, give a rare picture of the Afrikaans community in its final years on the Plateau. A call to Kenya In 1961 Piet and Bets planned their wedding for 2 December. A few days before, a call came from the Dutch Reformed congregation of Vergenoeg in Eldoret. Bets remembers the family falling silent, and Piet's mother pleading with them not to accept. He was ordained in his parents' congregation at Marikana, and they married and set out. They land...

An overview of two short records in Habari 1987, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: "Skenking van kerkorrel" (Gift of a church organ), prepared by Ds J. Grobler, and "Die Oos-Afrika ossewa" (The East African ox wagon). Both originals are in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Two objects from the Afrikaner settlement of the Uasin Gishu ended up in South Africa: the old organ of the Vergenoeg church in Eldoret, and an ox wagon that once carried a family to communion. Habari 1987 recorded where each came from. Vergenoeg: far enough The Dutch Reformed congregation of Vergenoeg was founded on 29 August 1908 on Frans Arnoldi's farm near Nakuru by Ds J.M. Louw, who had been sent from the Transvaal. He named it Vergenoeg, "far enough", because the Afrikaners had now trekked far enough. His text was Mark 16 verse 3. The first church was the so called bamboo church, a temporary building with bamboo walls...

An overview of "Die laaste dag" (The last day), by a writer signing as "Viedas", first published in Die Kerkblad of the Gereformeerde Kerk on 17 February 1982 and reprinted in Habari 1984, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Eldoret once had two Afrikaans churches. The larger was the Dutch Reformed (NG) congregation of Vergenoeg. The smaller was the Gereformeerde Kerk, which, the article says, existed in Kenya for just over half a century, from 1909 to 1964. This piece tells the story of its last Sunday. A church built in 1932 On 24 September 1932 the members moved into their new church building in Eldoret with great joy. The writer notes it was the first Gereformeerde church building in Central Africa, with fine cedar woodwork. Two years later they called their own minister, the young Ds Abraham Aucamp. At communion time families came from far away and cam...

An overview of "Huldeblyk aan Thysie Davies" (A tribute to Thysie Davies) by Hermanus Steyn, published in Habari 1986, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. M.J. Davies, known to everyone as Thysie, was one of the first children born on the Uasin Gishu Plateau. His parents came to what was then British East Africa in 1908 and settled at Sergoit, and Thysie was born there on 27 October 1909. The Davies family is closely tied to Sergoit Rock. Other accounts in Habari say the Van Rensburg trek camped at the foot of the rock on the land the Davies family took up. A helping hand Hermanus Steyn remembers him as a much loved and helpful man. When a neighbour went out to his fields at harvest, Thysie's tractors and threshing machines were often already there, ready to help, without anyone having asked. He was a good jockey and polo player, and with his racehorse "Make...

An overview of "Florence Bouwer skryf" (Florence Bouwer writes), the memories of Florence Bouwer, born Emslie, dated 15 September 1989 and published in Habari 1991, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Florence Bouwer was a small girl when her family came with the Van Rensburg trek in 1908. She wrote these memories eighty years later, partly from what she remembered and partly from what her older sisters told her. Her account takes us from the trek itself to the first school at Broederstroom, the early church, and a farm near Eldoret called Chepkoilel. The trek of 1908 As she remembered it, the Van Rensburg trek was the biggest of the treks, with about seventy families. Her father, George Emslie, came with her mother and seven children, along with families such as the Jordaans, Roets, Van der Merwes, Smits, Steyns and Davieses. She quotes a letter from Oom Frikkie Smi...

An overview of "Early Days in Kenya, with some information about the Van Rensburg Trek", a settler's memories tape recorded by Piet Roets in conversation with Mitford Bowker around 1971 and edited by Gareth Mitford-Barberton in 1986. Published in Habari 1994, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text. Few records of the Van Rensburg trek come from someone who was actually on it. This one does. The speaker is not named in the printed text, but he tells us he came to Kenya as a young man with his family, married into the Van Rensburg family, and was still living on a portion of his father in law's farm when the tape was made. His story covers the journey, the first years on the farms and the long hard work of carting goods up from Londiani. The call to the Plateau Back in South Africa his father farmed maize, cattle and sheep, moving the stock down to the bushveld every winter. A few years after t...